http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
BILL CLINTON used to be a Bubba,
but he's a Bobo now.

A Bobo, as everybody who read
David Brooks "Bobos in
Paradise" knows, is a yuppie who
successfully merged the bohemian urges of
the '60s with the acquisitive impulses of the
'80s. A Bobo wears jeans and $100 running
shoes into the Age of Information.

A Bobo is a baby boomer who made it
without bloodlines, a mixed breed who's
half-bohemian, half-bourgeois. He has
replaced the snobbish White Anglo Saxon
Protestant - the WASP - who was born to the
manor with money, status and upper-class
genes and who revels in his well-bred
Machiavellian maneuverings. The Bobo, on
the other hand, is a bohemian who becomes
bourgeois through books and smarts
acquired on a campus. He feels another's
pain, but he wants others to feel his pain,
too. He can't feel good about himself unless
others feel good about him.

So Bill Clinton whines in the New York
Times: "I am accustomed to the rough and
tumble of politics, but the accusations made
against me in (the Marc Rich) case have
been particularly painful because for eight
years I worked hard to make good decisions
for the American people." We're such
ingrates.

Republicans and the vast right wing
conspiracy are to President Bobo as the
furies that pursued Orestes. They're pests,
but unlike the devil they didn't make him do
it. They just made everything worse. ("Geraldo, why are they so
mean to me?") Clinton as a Bobo is Machiavelli with a bleeding
heart. He was pure Bobo in his speech to the Oracle Corp.
convention of Internet specialists on Monday: "I think it's insulting to
poor people to say they ought to have to make a choice between
penicillin and Pentium." The WASP had a sharper stinger than that.

President Bill's decision to take an office in Harlem was another
perfect Bobo gesture. The bourgeois Clinton initially chose an office
near Carnegie Hall, but the bohemian Clinton had the perfect
fallback position next door to the Apollo. Norman Mailer might call
him a "White Negro" if Toni Morrison had not already called him "our
first black president." (The long-suffering blacks get blamed for
everything.) If moving his office to Harlem was less a gesture of his
liberal sensitivities - he displaced the Child Services Administration
- it was one of the few neighborhoods where he could get a view of
residents who might throw roses instead of ripe tomatoes.

Like husband, like wife. Hillary Clinton, according to David Brooks,
is the female Bobo poster child: "She marched in the sixties, traded
currencies in the eighties, and she has a full stock of countercultural,
progressive attitudes mixed with down-home ambition." And this
was before Hillary won her Senate seat, registered her china and
silver as though she were a breathless bride who couldn't wait for
the blushing to begin and furnished her house with chairs and tables
sent to the White House by the rich and infamous (and some who
just wanted to be famous).

Hillary's acquired a few smarts. She hired James Kennedy as her
new communications director. Mr. Kennedy is a familiar Clinton
handyman, who was the spokesman for the White House Counsel's
Office in the days when every day meant someone had to explain
thong panties and why that wasn't really a stain on the intern's dress.
In Washington, politics is never having to say you're ashamed.

As we say in the news biz, the Clintons are a story with legs (and
sometimes thick ankles). "Why Move On?" asks the Weekly
Standard, and answers its own question: "This is too much fun." You
could ask any conservative who struggled to get someone to listen
when he was forever saying, if you can bear the thought, that the
president had no clothes. And now we get to say "we told you so."

Liberals have their own reasons to enjoy the show now. Liberals can
finally show their "independence" by attacking one of their own now
that he's safely down. Of course, they're as independent as flies on
flypaper (or as Bill might have said, back when he was from
Arkansas: "As independent as a hog on ice"). Anyone who
defended our Bill through the sex, sin and skin scandals because
they were afraid not to have nothing to fear now from the Great
Pardoner. Sycophancy shrinks without its power source. If nothing
makes a man (or woman) so vain than to be told he (or she) is a
sinner, scolding the sinner panders to a greater vanity. Bill won't run
into the vanities in Harlem. Why else do you think he got off the A
train at 125th
Street?

02/16/01: Clarence Thomas addresses an imperfect world 02/12/01: Ariel Sharon, not by Steven Spielberg 02/07/01: Profaning the sacred with the political 02/05/01: What's the Creator got to do with it? 02/01/01: Live like the snopses, leave like the snopses 01/29/01: It's education, stupid 01/25/01: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"01/22/01: Poetry and religion in the Bush administration 01/18/01: Ashcroft can't dance (don't ask him) 01/15/01: Clothes make the First Lady 01/11/01: Pity Jerusalem in the 'peace' process 01/08/01: Laying the political race card 01/04/01: 'What women want' in the new millennium 01/02/01: This year, looking ahead is sure sweeter than looking back 12/21/00: Black power with a Republican face 12/21/00: First impressions of two First Ladies 12/18/00: Challenge for the 'better angels of our nature' 12/14/00: What we've lost sight of 12/13/00: Hillary in the lion's den 12/08/00: Return of the 'second sex' on campus 12/04/00: Politics as entertainment today 11/30/00: Winner vs. whiner 11/27/00: Measuring against history 11/23/00: Memories of Thanksgiving past 11/17/00: In defense of the Electoral College 11/16/00: More than one way to win an election 11/13/00: Sexual politics squared 11/09/00: A Middle East legacy 11/06/00: Filling in the dots at campaign's end11/02/00: His own man in full 10/30/00: The Oval Office, through a glass brightly 10/23/00: There'll always be an England. Maybe. 10/19/00: The celebrity candidate 10/16/00: 'Ladies night' at the second debate 10/12/00: Gore vs. Bush: Volvo vs. Maserati 10/10/00: We weep for Rami for he is dead 10/05/00: Looking at Lieberman from inside the 'ghetto' 10/02/00: Campaigns, candidates, and kissy-face 09/28/00: Laughing and crying over Joe Lieberman 09/21/00: Targeting teenagers for money
09/21/00: Sexual politics in New York 09/18/00: Surviving the stereotypes and debates 09/14/00: Gloria Steinem runs cheerfully into captivity 09/12/00: Sex in the eye of the partisan 09/07/00: 'Sex and death' on the college campus 09/05/00: Joe Lieberman as a 'Menorah Man' 08/31/00: Rising suns of the conventions 08/17/00: Changing icons: From Loretta Young to Hillary Clinton 08/14/00: The Creator returns to the public square 08/10/00: Bursting with pride, but caution too 08/07/00: Brains, beauty and beastly politics 08/03/00: A candidate with a superego 07/31/00: The sizzling Lynne Cheney 07/27/00: The party of the aging Playboys 07/24/00 Hillary drives the Jewish wagon into a ditch 07/20/00 Conservatives gone fishin' 07/17/00: Snoop Doggy Dogg was a founding father, wasn't he? 07/13/00: When a teenager doesn't need a prime minister 07/10/00: Abortion as cruel and unusual punishment 07/06/00: Surviving 'survivor' TV 07/03/00: Independence Day with Norman Rockwell 06/29/00: Here comes 'something old' 06/26/00: Waiting too long for the baby 06/22/00: Good teachers, curious students and oxymorons 06/19/00: Wanted: Some ants for Gore's pants 06/15/00: Like father, like daughter 06/12/00: Culture wars and conservative warriors 06/08/00: Return of the housewife 06/05/00: Hillary and Al -- playing against type 05/31/00: The sexual revolution confronts the SUV 05/25/00: Waiting for the movie 05/22/00: Pistol packin' mamas 05/18/00: Journalists and the 'new time' religion 05/15/00: There's nothing like a (military) dame 05/11/00: 'The Human Stain' on campus 05/09/00: We've come a long way, Betty Friedan 05/04/00: From George Washington to Mansa Masu 05/01/00: Gore's ruthless doublespeak 04/28/00: Doing it Castro's way 04/24/00: Women's studies beget narrow minds 04/17/00: The slippery slope of anti-Semitism 04/13/00: A villain larger than life 04/10/00: When mourning becomes an economic tragedy 04/03/00: The last permissible bigotry03/30/00: Seeking the political Oscar 03/23/00: The gaying of America 03/20/00: Pointy-eared quadrupeds on campus 03/16/00: The shocking art of the establishment 03/13/00: Sawdust on the campaign trail 03/10/00: Campaign rhetoric of manhood 03/06/00: The Amphetamine of the People 03/02/00: Elegy for Amadou 02/29/00: With only a million, what's a poor girl to do?02/24/00: The changing politics of change 02/16/00: Tip from Hillary: 'Let 'em eat eggs' 02/10/00: No seances with Eleanor 02/07/00: Campaigning like our founding fathers 02/03/00: When neo-Nazis have short memories 01/31/00: George W. -- 'Ladies man' and 'man's man'01/27/00: Dead white males and live white politicians 01/25/00: Smarting over presidential smarts 01/21/00: A post-modern song for `The Sopranos' 01/19/00: When personality is a long-distance plus 01/13/00: French lessons in amour --- and marriage 01/10/00: Reaching for the Big Golden Apple 01/07/00: Liddy Dole as the face of feminism 01/04/00: Hillary: From victim to victor12/30/99: 'Dream catchers' for the millennium 12/27/99: In search of a candidate with strength and eloquence 12/21/99: The president as First Lady12/16/99: Columbine with blurred hindsight 12/09/99: Homeless deserve discriminating attention12/07/99: Casual censors and deadly know-nothings 12/02/99: Why mom didn't make general: A reality tale 11/30/99: Potholes on the road to the Promised Land 11/25/99: A feast for the spirit and the stomach 11/23/99: Fathers need to say 'I (can) do' 11/18/99: Adventures of a conservative pundit 11/15/99: Traveling with Jefferson on the information highway11/11/99: Wanted: 'Foliage of forbiddinness' for the oval office 11/09/99: Eggs, art and rotten commerce 11/05/99: Al Gore, 'Alpha Male'. Bow wow. 11/01/99: Gay love10/28/99: Lose one Dole, lose two 10/26/99: Rebels with a violent cause 10/21/99: Reforming parents, reforming schools 10/19/99: The male mystique -- he shops10/13/99:The campaign of the Teletubbies10/08/99: Money is in the eye of the art dealer 10/01/99: Lincoln's 'Almost Chosen People' 09/29/99: Introducing Bill and Hillary Bickerson 09/27/99: Must we wait for the next massacre?09/24/99: Miss America meets Miss'd America09/21/99: Princeton's 'professor death'09/16/99: The Cisneros lesson09/13/99: No clemency for personal politics09/08/99: M-M-M is for manhood 08/30/99: Blocking the schoolhouse door 08/27/99: No kick from cocaine08/23/99: Movies don't kill people 08/19/99: A rude awakening 08/16/99: Dubyah and that 'language' thing 08/09/99: Chauvinist sows -- oink oink